Metal Slug Anthology

"One of the best collections yet"

SNK is celebrating the 10 year anniversary of their 2D side-scrolling military action franchise, Metal Slug with a collection of all seven titles. Fans can finally store away all those old Neo-Geo cartridges, and get rid of those partial combo packs released on the PS2 and Xbox, as now all seven games(1-6, X) are on one disc which is appropriately titled Metal Slug Anthology.

Metal Slug has been a huge hit in the arcades the past decade, for the few of you who haven't stumbled across a Metal Slug arcade cabinet sometime in your lifetime I'll bring you up to speed on what the franchise is about. Metal Slug has always been about non-stop, destroy everything, action. Every entry in the series was the definition of a true arcade game where you could hop right in and play with the same three buttons that enabled you to fire a gun, toss a grenade, or jump. Each mission had a challenging boss that usually took up a good chunk of the screen. Since they were arcade games, none of them took all that long to beat, but were the perfect length to spend an afternoon at the arcades.

To my delight, the action still holds up well for all the Metal Slug games. I had just as much fun blazing through the games with a buddy in co-op as I did years ago. Unfortunately, the games were also just as repetitive as I remember them which made it a chore to try and complete them solo. The one major strike on this franchise has always been that it never took too many strides for innovation other than new bosses, and maybe one or two new enemies per game. Still, with all that said each game was always fun when playing with a friend. No matter what, make sure you have somebody by your side at all times to play through each and every Metal Slug game.

Since this is a Wii game, SNK was ever so kind to offer several styles of control schemes. There is a couple which only require just the Wii-Remote, then one for the Wii-Remote & Nunchuck, and for traditionalists, a scheme which uses the GameCube controller. Of all these options I preferred the Nunchuck/Wiimote option the best. The only motion-sensing controls present involves shaking the Wiimote up and down to chuck grenades which works really well.

Each Metal Slug game takes about an hour to an hour and a half to beat, so expect to spend about 8 or 9 nine hours if you want to knock out each and every game. There is a little bit of bonus content to unlock in the form of concept art, music tracks, and a text interview with the developers (you read that right, not video, not audio, but TEXT). I was disappointed to find out the two Neo-Geo Pocket Metal Slug games weren't included as unlockables, which is too bad since so many people missed out on them during the Neo-Geo Pocket's all too brief run in the handheld market.

The Metal Slug games had well detailed and animated 2D sprites for their time. They still hold up good to this day since 2D graphics age a heck of a lot better than 3D games (try playing almost any PSone or N64 game today and see for yourself). However like with the gameplay it was disappointing that SNK showed very little strides in upping the quality of the 2D sprites with each succeeding game. They didn't need to do that for the audio however. Each game had a compelling soundtrack which was a perfect fit for the fast, heated-action and also gave it a natural quirky feel the franchise has been known for as well.

Despite not including some of the portable games in the package, Metal Slug Anthology is still a great collection. With a MSRP of $40 it may seem a little steep for just seven games compared to a lot of other collections (like the Midway and Capcom collections on Xbox and PS2 that offered about three times as many games for half the price). However, with this collection, all seven games hold their own without any stinkers to clutter things up. If you're a fan of the series in any sense, or just a fan of old-school 2D gaming, then you must have Metal Slug Anthology.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/22/07